


Jane Foster, Five Days Later

by MissIzzy



Series: Walking Behind With a Bucket [21]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Ficlet, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 11:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16533875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissIzzy/pseuds/MissIzzy
Summary: Reviewing the contents of her late mentor's lab.





	Jane Foster, Five Days Later

Erik died intestate. He’s got at least two relatives still alive, but it’s going to take a while for them to get to the U.S. from their small town in Norway. Jane’s only managed to get there herself because Pepper sent a private jet. She spent the flight catching up on the destruction of Asgard, the last known state of the Asgardian race, and the current status of Darcy, who is at the Avengers facility waiting for her. They hugged for a long time when Jane landed. They’ve both lost most of their current friends; it’s good to have each other again.

Thor’s staying with the other Avengers. Jane understands that decision. Hell, the way his race is right now, he really does need to marry a fellow Asgardian and have lots of babies. She wishes him well.

Erik’s personal effects are already neatly packed up for his family to deal with whenever they do arrive. Jane and Darcy are there to deal with the contents of his lab. Various Asgardian artifacts that have ended up on Earth at one time or another are mixed in with equipment and readings, and Jane may well be the last person alive who can make heads or tails of everything. Or almost everything; there are some pieces or paper and Word and Excel files that probably only Erik ever understood, and left behind no explanations for. Those are hard to stare at, driving home to her that her mentor is  _dead_ , along with her assistants, and her mother, and oh, yes, half the universe and most of the Asgardian race too.

For the same reason it’s hard to deal with the artifacts, to match together objects with similar patterns on them, hang fragile labels on the things made of the more breakable material, yell hastily at Darcy not to touch any of the staffs; after the leak of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s records on them, it became basic safety not to handle any Asgardian weapons with one’s bare hands. Jane’s memories of Asgard are now more vivid than they’ve ever been. She had mixed feelings about the place when she was there, but now she can’t help but mourn the loss of such a beautiful, unique world, a civilization that will likely never again be what it was, if it survives at all, and all the knowledge that’s likely been lost with so much of the population dead.

She’s also found correspondence related to various artifacts possibly going to museums. It’s not safe to do that with the weapons, but she thinks that an appropriate fate for most of the rest, once they’ve finished getting all the technological knowledge they can out of them. Some of them might even go immediately.

Darcy’s the one who finds it: a ovalline metal object sitting in a bottom drawer with a piece of paper with Erik's handwriting. Together, they read:  _Contact device/homing beacon, likely from early in Odin’s reign, originally used to send tracking signal to Valkyries, can still send to various people, including Thor, but he doesn’t know how to use it!_

“Didn’t Thor say those of his people who escaped Thanos were led by a Valkyrie?” Darcy voices the obvious thought. “If they’re having trouble finding Earth, this could help them a lot, if we just knew how to operate it. Though I suppose if Thor himself doesn’t know…”

Jane draws the object out. It’s light, significantly bigger than her open palm but able to sit in it easily, and warm even through her thin rubber gloves. She examined Asgard’s technological devices every chance she got while she was there, even got some of the people around her to tell her a little bit about how they worked. Modern Asgard tech, of course, made great efforts to not look like tech, but appeared more like free-moving objects and streams of light. But this doesn’t look unlike some of the devices their healers used on her. Except for the big switches and buttons on the side, which those had managed to do away with.

She supposes turning it on isn’t as simple as pulling or pressing them; Erik probably tried that already. A lot of Asgard’s objects responded to mental commands, and they’d apparently had that ability for a very, very long time, possibly as far back as the age of the Valkyries. Maybe it responds to great need, in which case Thor should probably be able to operate it now, if they can get it to him.

She’s seen smaller versions of the switches on a couple of other objects in the lab. Most of them have rough dates on them, and some instructions for use; she can probably trace the device development. But also, the device’s version of a battery could easily be dead. They also might have to figure out how to hotwire a charge. She remembers one detail from Pepper’s brief on Thor’s surviving traveling companion, that he has a lot of experience in space technology-weapons-focused, but Jane’s gotten the impression a lot of space weapons are energy based. He might know what to do.

“I don’t know whether we can actually figure out how to make this thing work,” she says to Darcy. “But I think it’s worth a try.”


End file.
